“Are you done laughing like a hyena?” he asked, his blue eyes piercing her with intensity.
“You have no sense of humor at all, Harek. Honestly. You tell me you’re a frickin’ vampire angel and expect me not to laugh? What alien world do you come from? Oh, wait. You do come from an alien word, so to speak. Heaven. Or is it Hell?”
“I don’t come from either place. I come from the Norselands of 850 A.D. where I died after committing a grave sin. Well, many grave sins, but one really big one. Each of my brothers and I are guilty of one of the Seven Deadly Sins.”
“Eight-fifty,” she scoffed. “That would make you”—she did a quick mental calculation—“about a thousand years old.”
“Add a century or so.”
Holy moly! And he actually expects me to believe this crap? “And your big sin was?”
“Greed,” he said without hesitation. At her arched brows, he explained, “I like gold and riches. I have a talent for gaining wealth, at any cost, truth to tell.”
“So you’re a time traveler, like Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future?”
He shook his head. “We vangels—Viking vampire angels—used to time travel, back and forth through the eras, but the last few years Michael stationed us here, permanently, in your time.”
“Michael?”
“St. Michael the Archangel.”
She rolled her eyes. This just got better and better. She took another sip of bourbon and waved for him to continue.
“Because God was disgusted with us Vikings—too vain and vicious, He claimed—’twas decided that the Viking race would fade into extinction. You will notice there is no Viking nation today. Not Norway, or Sweden, or Denmark. The closest there is to a Norse culture is Iceland. In any case, God decided to wipe us all out by having us absorbed into other societies, and as for us seven Sigurdsson brothers in particular, we were given a second chance to make amends by becoming vampire angels to fight against the Lucipires.”
“I’m afraid to ask, what are Lucipires? Some kind of scary beasts?”
“Worse than that. Lucipires are Satan’s demon vampires, led by Jasper, worst of the fallen angels. The Lucies roam the earth, taking terrible sinners before their destined time, giving them no chance to repent before dying. Their fate is almost worse than Hell for those who die normally in some grave state of sin. These victims go to Horror, Jasper’s domain in the far North, where they are turned into demon vampires.”
“Seriously, Harek? Seriously? You expect me to believe this crap?”
“ ’Tis the truth, Camille. I wish it were not so, but . . . no, I take that back. If it were not so, I would be one of Satan’s minions for all these years toasting my toes in his hellish fires.” He grinned then and added, “Marshmallow toes.”
She was not amused. “So, you’re a fighter in God’s army?”
“You could say that.”
“Like a priest?”
“Hardly. I am a Viking. Purity is not one of our strong points.”
“You know that this is impossible to believe.”
He emptied his glass, then set it on a table next to his chair. “So be it,” he said, and waved a hand, back and forth like a windshield wiper in front of the fireplace. Immediately, a hazy cloud appeared, and in it, she could see a huge beast with red scales and red eyes. It looked like a man, and yet not human at all with its clawed hands and long tail, not to mention fangs, really big fangs. The beast was fighting with a man with wings . . . well, not really wings, they were more like hazy blue appendages coming out of his back. The beast and the angel man, who also had fangs, fought with swords. When the victor’s sword pierced the demon’s heart, it began to dissolve into a puddle of . . . slime.
As the mind picture, or whatever it was, began to fade, her gaze shot to Harek. “The cathedral? That slimy substance on the floor?”
He nodded. “The woman back at the cathedral that you saw . . . she was a demon vampire. Her target was your father.”
Camille let out a little whimper of distress. “I think I need another drink.” When he refilled her glass, she said, “Are you saying there are creatures like that roaming the earth? Demons, I mean.”
He nodded. “Actually, there was a large nest of Lucies living in New Orleans until about two years ago. They worked out of a restaurant called Anguish.”
“Eeew! I’ve eaten there. Before it burned down.” She shivered with distaste at the prospect of having been surrounded by demons. Not that she believed Harek, of course.
An uncomfortable thought occurred to her then. “The SEALs? Coronado? What are you doing there? Oh God! I’m going to have to tell the CO that we’re being infiltrated by . . . by some people? Terrorists, maybe.”
“No, no, no! You cannot repeat what I’ve told you. Vangels are good guys. Most of the time. Our job with the SEALs is to help eradicate Boko Haram. They are evil personified. Some of them are—”
“Lucipires,” she finished for him.
“Precisely.”
She put a hand to her aching head. Her brain was going to explode with all this information Harek was filling it with. “Exactly how old are you?”
“If you count my almost thirty human years, eleven hundred and ninety-five years old.”
“Oh my God!”
He winced. “I really wish you wouldn’t swear like that.”
“Huh? I distinctly heard you use the F word this morning when that truck driver pulled in front of me.”
“The F word is allowed . . . well, not allowed, but not as bad for vangels as using the Lord’s name as an expletive.”
“Oh good Lord!”
He made an oddly adorable tsking noise.
Just then, they heard the sound of an engine pulling into the driveway and the garage door opening. They both sat up. That would be her parents. Earlier than expected. It sounded like they were arguing.
“Camille,” he said, “I can explain this better. Later. But I need to spend some time alone with your father tonight.”
“What are you going to do to him?” she asked with sudden alarm. She wasn’t very close to her father, but she wouldn’t want him hurt, either.
“Hopefully, save him. And your mother. I need you to go upstairs once he comes in.”
“Why can’t I stay?”
“ ’Tis a private matter. Go.”
“I don’t know.”
“Trust me,” he said.
And, strangely enough, she did.
A vangel’s work is never done . . .
Harek was still in the library, but he could hear Camille talking to her parents in the hallway.
“You’re home early,” Camille said.
“Not really,” Jeannette disagreed. Did she ever have a warm tone of voice when speaking to her daughter? “It’s close to midnight. Besides, the band was playing that loud modern music, and some of the dancing was rather obscene.”
“I would have stayed,” Emile told Camille, “but your mother wanted to leave. I rather enjoyed watching the dancers.”
Jeannette made a sound of disgust.
Meanwhile, Harek was rummaging around the room, sniffing and exploring. Searching. In a cabinet, under the liquor bar, behind an impressive array of bottles, he found what he was looking for. A quart bottle of antifreeze. Poison. And for a college professor with his research skills, not all that original. With a nod of satisfaction at the quickness of his discovery, Harek closed the cabinet doors and placed the plastic container behind some books on a nearby shelf. He sat down again, whiskey glass in hand.
“It was a beautiful wedding,” Camille remarked, probably to calm the waters of what had been sounding like the beginning of a domestic argument.
“Yes. Yes, it was. Everything was perfect. Inez’s cousin from Biloxi caught the bridal bouquet.” Jeannette’s voice was almost accusatory.
“What? You wanted me to catch the thing?” Camille laughed. “One of the reasons I left early was to avoid just that. Harek would have had a heart attack if
I caught the bouquet.”
“Where is your young man?” her father asked.
Hardly hers, but now is not the time for arguing semantics. “In the library, having a drink.”
“Wonderful. I could use a good bourbon myself.”
“Hah! Seems to me you had more than—”
“That will be enough, Jeannette. This is not the time or the place,” Emile interrupted his wife sternly.
“Whatever,” Jeannette said. “I’m off to bed. It’s been a long day, a long week, and we still have the brunch we’re hosting tomorrow afternoon.”
“Good night, Jeannette. Good night, Camille. What time will you be leaving?”
“Around noon.”
“Plenty of time for us to talk. Dr. Solic said he never got a chance to discuss the new curriculum with you.”
Camille had told Harek about her parents wanting her to enter some fast-track, higher degree program at Tulane. That’s probably what he was referring to.
There was more murmuring, then the sound of high heels climbing the stairs and Emile walking toward the library.
When he entered, Harek said, “Lock the door, please.”
“I beg your pardon,” Emile said.
“You should.” Harek stood and walked over to the shelf, where he picked up the antifreeze and raised it for Emile to see. Harek said nothing, just arched his brows.
Emile’s face turned red, infused with anger. The lackwit didn’t know yet just how much trouble he was in. But he had the good sense to lock the door. “You had no right to go through my private property.”
“We both know why you purchased antifreeze.”
Emile shrugged as if he owed him no explanation. With a pretended calm, the man walked over to the cabinet and poured himself a large glass of bourbon. Harek noticed that his hands shook, and he cupped the glass in both hands to prevent it spilling as he sank into one of the wingback chairs, the one Camille had just vacated.
Harek took the other chair, again.
Ironic, wasn’t it, Harek noted suddenly, that here was an angel, so to speak—that would be me—in a winged chair. Angel, wings. Get it. Of course, there was a potential demon—that would be Emile, if he didn’t change his ways—sitting in a winged chair, too. Harek shook his head to clear it of such nonsense. Then, Focus, man, focus. You have work to do.
Emile sipped at his drink with a sigh of appreciation. The specially aged brew probably cost ten dollars a swallow. “If you’re thinking of blackmail, forget about it. I’m not the one holding the purse strings in this family.” Emile was calmer now, with booze courage. He probably thought he could bluff his way out of this. “Does Camille know what a lowlife you are?”
“Does Camille know what a nithing you are?” Harek countered.
“What? A nothing? I’ll have you know I am an esteemed professor. My research books are read worldwide. My reputation as an academic is excellent. If you think to intimidate me with insults—”
“Blah, blah, blah. I said nithing, not nothing. A nithing is less than nothing.”
Emile raised his chin haughtily. “Your manners are atrocious, even for a Northerner.”
What a pompous ass! Thinks he can get away with murder! Thinks he can turn the tables on a vangel! Little does he know how far north I come from.
“What is it you want from me?” Emile demanded to know.
“ ’Tis not what I want from you, but what I can do for you.”
“And what is that? Sell me a high-priced home security system? Provide me with unnecessary bodyguard services? Insure my home or antiques?” The snideness of his remarks was a cover-up for nervousness, Harek realized.
“I can save your soul.”
“Pfff! As if you could! Besides, I’m not ready to die yet.”
“You are in danger of a fate worse than death, my friend.”
Emile bristled at Harek’s referring to him as a friend, but his innate good breeding, even in this unusual situation, prevented him from saying so. A lowlife, yes. But friend, no. “Isn’t that what they say about women and rape? A fate worse than death?” Emile continued to sip at his drink.
Now he was making Harek angry. “It is what they say when Satan’s minions are circling a sinner, fool. Do you not sense the immortal danger your soul is in?”
“Oh please! I don’t believe in all that Heaven-Hell nonsense.”
“You did at one time,” Harek reminded him. Between the cathedral where Harek had killed the Lucipire and the reception, Harek had pulled over to the side of the road and used his laptop in the car to research Emile Dumaine’s history. Amazing what you could find out when you had the skills. Emile had grown up in a strong Catholic family. They’d been poor as church mice, but Emile was bright and ambitious and he’d earned scholarship after scholarship until he had a doctorate degree and had married into money. Jeannette’s family money. “In fact, you once considered the seminary.”
“How did you know that? Never mind. That was before I grew up and got enlightened. I only would have attended seminary to get an education. No way would I have taken final vows.”
Harek sighed. “Just when did you start down the path of sin?”
“What have I done that is so wrong?” He waved a hand at the antifreeze that sat on the liquor bar. “I haven’t used that. Yet. Maybe I never would.”
“And maybe you would. Besides, for more than twenty-five years, you have lived a double life. No, I do not want to hear your excuses for infidelity and illegitimate children and hidden expenses and deceit, deceit, deceit. I can tell you without a doubt that God is not pleased with you. If you died today of some natural cause, you would go to Hell, or some holding place until the Final Judgment, but that is not why I am here. ’Tis what you are contemplating”—he pointed at the antifreeze—“that will take you to a place far worse than Hades if you are not careful. You, my friend—and believe me, I am the only friend you have at the moment—are in the crosshairs of an evil far greater than you could ever contemplate with all your book learning.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“More like, who in heaven am I? I am Harek Sigurdsson, born in the year 820, died in the year 850, when I became a Viking vampire angel, one of God’s vangels.”
“An angel? Ha, ha, ha.”
“Not an angel. A vangel.”
Emile blinked at him. “Are you crazy?” He was eyeing the locked door now like it had been a mistake and wondering how he was going to escape.
“Your sinful state has come to the attention of the Lucipires.”
“Oh good Lord!”
“Not the Lord, but the other guy. In this case, Jasper, king of all the Lucipires, which are demon vampires. They are sent to take the gravest of human sinners before their time, sucking the life out of them before they have a chance to repent, as they might have done during a normal life span. Sinners, those whose souls are not yet totally black, always figure they can commit the bad deed and repent later. Fools, one and all!” Myself included.
Emile flushed guiltily. That’s just what he’d done, convinced himself that he could commit murder and make up for it later. Must mean he still had a speck of conscience.
“The place these victims are taken is called Horror,” Harek continued, “and it is just that. A horrible place where people are tortured endlessly until they agree to join the ranks of the Lucipire undead. That, my friend, is the fate worse than death.”
“This is absolutely ridiculous.”
“I wish it were,” Harek said sadly, and felt his incisors extending.
“You . . . you have fangs and blue wings,” Emile sputtered.
“The fangs are real. The wings are just fog . . . an impression of something that might be there one day. Back to the Lucipires . . .” Harek planted a mind picture in Emile’s head and showed him the woman who had followed him into St. Louis Cathedral, the one who had morphed into a huge fanged creature dripping mung from its scales and drool from its fangs.
Emile recoiled a
nd dropped his glass to the floor, where the liquid splattered and the glass splintered into many pieces. Neither of them paid any attention to the mess.
“How’d you do that? Is it a magic trick? Or some new electronic marvel connected to your cell phone or something? Camille said you’re some kind of technological genius, but . . .” Emile continued to gape at the cloudy picture.
Camille said that about me? Before she knew who I really am? Well, well. Good to know. “No, it is not a trick or some gadget that can be scientifically explained.”
But Emile was not listening to him. “I’ve seen that woman several times the past few days. At the Faculty Club. At a gas station. Standing in front of this very house.”
Harek nodded. “She was following you, waiting for the right moment.”
“I don’t understand. Is she a stalker?”
“If only that was all she had been! But she is no longer of any importance. I killed her.”
“You . . . what?” Emile recoiled, finally beginning to realize the dangerous person he was with. A murderer, he would be thinking.
“When were you going to start the poison?” Harek asked, done with all this sidestepping of the real issue.
“Tonight,” Emile confessed, clearly confused. “I am tired of the double life. Sonja is badgering me to marry her. More and more every day. She wants to live in this house and enjoy the lifestyle my wife has always had. I keep telling her, Evermore and everything in it belongs to Jeannette. The only way I can get it is . . .” He didn’t have to finish the sentence for Harek to know what he meant.
“Excuses, Emile? Sonja made me do it?”
Emile raised his chin haughtily. “It’s what I want, too.”
“Is that really what you want?”
Emile thought for a long moment, then shook his head. “No. Everything has gotten out of hand.”
“If you are that unhappy with Jeannette, why not just leave?”